Page 5 of 5
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
How did it get so dark in the day
New York, New Haven, West Adams, Nanaimo, Vancouver, Seattle, Harrison, New Paltz, SETX, Odessa, Savannah, San Francisco, Cedar Point, Chicago, St Louis, Scottsboro, Boston, Bar Harbor, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have all let up to here, Philadelphia, where the Rocky statue was moved back to the Philadelphia Museum of Art but now is located along side the road and not in his triumphant, top of the stairs location.
Everyone knows about Rocky and the steps, but did you know that there’s actually good art inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art? This is On a Blue Ceiling, Eight Geometric Figures: Circle, Trapezoid, Parallelogram, Rectangle, Square, Triangle, Right Triangle, X (Wall Drawing No. 351) by Sol LeWitt, an accurately named unexpected ceiling installation, in a museum that (for whatever reason) I generally tend to skip when visiting Philadelphia.
Not far from the art museum is hell, or at least something that could possibly pass for hell in a pinch. Eastern State Penitentiary is a haunted rotting nightmare of an idea and of a building, but damn, is it beautiful to visit. There is no place I have ever visited that felt as haunted as this one, and it’s just feeling that makes me want to come back. Although certainly not in the dark when they offer a Halloween tour which, I believe, could actually kill me. And not in a good way, if that’s even possible.
Near the Philadelphia Art Museum and Eastern State Penitentiary is the site of the new Barnes Museum, Philadelphia’s next new thing. The building is under construction now and for the life of me I don’t think I understand exactly what it is that I’m looking at. It seems to be a bridge but without a floor, or maybe it’s a skylight with a solid roof deck. I guess I’ll find out with everyone else when the museum opens up next year, or possibly the year after that.
Still in Pennsylvania but farther away than Philadelphia is Punxsutawney, a hard to spell town that is world famous for one reason only. Just like the Rocky statue greets you in Philadelphia, a giant groundhog statue greets you in Punxsutawney. And the actual groundhog, named Phil, lives right behind the statue in a window in the libray, in what could best be described as not great conditions. Seriously Punxsutawney, that rodent deserves a little groundhog palace, not a fly infested window prison that makes you sad when you see it.
As the 2011 Weekend Trips Slideshow nears its inevitable end, we’re bouncing all over the place as we catch up on some of the last few remaining interesting photos and/or pictures. We’re in Dallas now at the brand new Winspear Opera House, designed by Norman Foster. I really wanted to see the building. It would be only the second time I had seen and opera (my first was in the cheap seats at La Scala in Milan), and even though I had no idea what Mussorgsky’s Boris Goduno was even about, I decided to buy a ticket and experience the building in all its glory. What I didn’t think about was what I looked like, I was wearing just a black shirt and cargo-ish pants, and suddenly I found myself mixing in a lobby where every other person looked like they were going to cowboy prom. Despite being worse dressed than some of the Russian peasants on stage, I enjoyed the building and enjoyed Boris Guduno right to the end, even though a sizeable contingent of the very well dressed attendees bolted after intermission.
From Dallas we’re now in Raleigh, North Carolina for one last museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art. The museum was nice but kind of hidden, nowhere near downtown which, I guess, means that its right at home in Raleigh, a growing area that could really use better planning and maybe a light rail line or two. Its location out along the perimeter does have one advantage though. With all that land so far away from everyone else, they have lots of room for a pretty impressive outdoor sculpture park, which I pretty much had to myself on a weekday afternoon in March.
We’re at the last stop of this eleven page journey, and for anyone brave or foolish enough to have made this long journey with me, you are rewarded with pictures from Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens of a one time performance of Odysseus at Hell Gate, a show by Alex Kahn and Sophia Michahelles that is all about where it actually is.
Odysseus at Hell Gate was a one time performance that included giant puppets representing people like Robert Moses (his head is a cyclops Unisphere), Typhoid Mary and Billie Holiday, among others. The puppets appeared almost magical as they moved around the sculpture park, a great way to spend a summer evening and a great way to end yet another slideshow.
